The Good Soldier

                                                                

  In late May I placed a call Sheila Hall Larson to ask if she would be willing to talk to me about an article for Heart of Ohio Magazine.  Urged on by my daughter, Chief Master Sergeant Wendy Hunt of the 179^th, I had decided to try to do the article.  She had the utmost admiration and respect for the General, and she felt this was a story people would want to hear.

Brigadier General Fred Larson died on January 1, 2012. Knowing it had been less than six months I was afraid it might be too soon for Mrs. Larson to talk about his loss, but Wendy kept asking and I finally made the call.

Sheila Larson is a gracious woman, but talking to her I could tell she was a little reluctant about the article.  I assured her that she would have complete control of the finished product, and she agreed to meet with me.

On the day of our meeting  I pulled into Sheila’s driveway and she met me at the door.  An attractive woman in her sixties, Sheila Larson has an air of composure about her that I am not certain I could muster at this stage of the grief process.  I liked her immediately; the fact that she had nice things to say about my daughter and son in law certainly didn’t hurt.

Sitting at her kitchen table she spoke openly about the loss of her husband and who he was.  “The people who worked for him either loved him or hated him.  Fred was a taskmaster, and he didn’t hesitate to point out the good or the bad.  But he also did a great deal of mentoring, and his door was always open because he wanted to be approachable.  My husband was a humble man who paid attention to his troops.  When someone would talk to Fred about his or her chances for advancement he would say, “The job you have right now is the most important job.  Learn to do that well, then set your goals.”

I was sitting across the table from a woman whose husband had been a career soldier; what part did Sheila play in that?  “Fred and I were a good team,” she said with obvious pride.

“When he was commander at the base he told me he was not concerned about his troops, but he was concerned about their families.   That’s when we decided the 179^th needed a Family Support Group.   Ellen Drouhard and I put some people together and we held our first meeting in early 1988.   In September we sent out a survey to see how much interest there was in a group like this, and then we got to work creating what we perceived the 179^th really needed.   We fashioned it after a very successful group in Oregon, but shaped it to serve our needs.” Sheila said.

Starting with nothing the group set out to form a support system that would serve the families when they needed help most.

“We held bake sales, sold Christmas ornaments and other fund raisers all the time because we had absolutely no money.  I remember once selling cookies in the chow hall and a military member asked me if I had a vendor’s license,” she laughed.

“The timing was right for the FSG, as we became known.  Eventually it became a part of the members  pre-mobilization briefing.   We did training with other bases in Ohio and other states, too.   I’m happy to say it is still a vital part of the 179^th, helping families while their loved ones are away serving our country.”

I listened and made notes and soaked in Sheila Larson’s calm; I appreciated what a strong woman she is.   The demands and deployments her husband’s chosen career demanded must have been hard to bear for someone left behind to hold down the fort, but she shows no signs of that.  She speaks quietly about a remarkable man with whom she was half the team; a loving family and a network of friends who keep her strong today. 

I did not know Brigadier General Fred Larson, but meeting him for the first time through the eyes of his wife was an honor.   I know she is accurate when she says, “Fred and I were a good team”.   

 I also believe that somewhere he’s smiling and saying:

“We were a good team, and you are still the good soldier.”

Eternal Life on the Internet

I must confess that I love today’s social technology!  I text and email and send pictures, write this blog….and on and on.  When Pinterest (electronic hoarding) wasn’t working correctly recently it put a crimp in my evening entertainment! (I actually got some housework done)  I confess I would give up my TV, something I really don’t care about any more, before I would let anyone touch my computer.   I’m hooked.

Of all the things I enjoy I especially like Facebook. It has allowed me to reconnect with so many people I went to school with and other people I had lost touch with years ago.   I’ve also made some new friends and acquaintances and this social medium allows me to get to know more about their lives and their families.  I love looking for pictures and posts that I think will amuse or pique the interest of my “friends”, and I look forward to the interaction each day.   It’s an amazing and useful tool that I utilize every day.

All that enjoyment is not without its flip side, however.    Over the last couple of years I’ve lost some friends and a family member whose Facebook pages are still on line.   I have a tough time wrapping my head around the fact that their faces still smile at me from the computer…their albums are still available to view and, in some cases, updated by friends or family….but they no longer exist.  How can that be?

 A couple of these pages I’ve visited numerous times, especially on a birthday or holiday.  I never leave a message…and if I did for whom would it be intended?  At times it seems poignant…at time ghoulish.   This electronic “grave visit” can be confusing.  The customs of how we honor and remember our dead are changing with the technology.   I’ve signed a good number of electronic guest books the last few years, and I see more and more permanent memorial pages on web.  They strike me as an electronic tombstone with music.

Perhaps the days of the carved angel over the grave are coming to an end….replaced by a selection of Beatles songs and a slideshow presentation of the lost loved ones life.  Instead of visiting the graveyard will tomorrow’s mourner be vising the memorial site from the comfort of the recliner? 

I have pictures of loved ones that I cherish, but somehow a Facebook page seems to keep a person alive in a way that doesn’t actually make sense to me.   I guess it’s not a good thing or a bad thing…..it is what it is.   Like so many things in today’s world it confuses and fascinates me.

                                                        Life is Good (and death is different)

 

The Pelee Island Gang

The other evening we were sitting around with some other long-married couples talking about when we first started out.   I remember those days well, when there was too much month left at the end of the money. We would gather up our pop bottles and take them back to the grocery store to collect the deposit.   Were we really that young and that poor?   Of course we were.

We talked about vacations back in the day, and what constituted “roughing it”.  That brought back memories of a one week vacation on Pelee Island. 

We were a young family that summer, our children were probably nine, ten and eleven years old, and ready for an adventure.   We were heading to Canadian waters to camp on Pelee Island….we would live on the beach for a week.   Everyone was excited…we were five couples with a bakers dozen of kids under the age of twelve.  We all knew one another from work…we were the staff of WMAN radio…the WMAN ALL STARS.   We played softball together, rode elephants together, participated in water ball fights and sat around in each others homes eating pizza and talking about “the business”.   What could possibly go wrong?

From the outset I had a sneaking feeling this might not be as much fun as everyone else thought it would be….but then I tend to be a realist.  The other couples were experienced campers, and they owned things like tents and Colman stoves and other things for which I had no frame of reference.   So, when we decided we were going to take the kids and go along, we had to hit a sporting goods department before we set sail.

If you are reading this and preparing for your first experience in the “great outdoors” let me share with you some things I learned rather quickly.   First of all, when shopping for a tent DO NOT believe anything that is written on the box.   There were lies all OVER that thing.   For instance:   “Sleeps six”.   Maybe six three year olds, or maybe a midget wrestling team…….but not six of anything over five feet tall.   Here’s another lie:   “Easy assembly”.   That is an out and out whopper. 

Having believed everything written on the box and plunked down our money, we put the tent box safely into the van.   We did not try to assemble it…why would we when the box boasted “easy assembly”?  The first time we actually saw the tent was when we opened the carton on the beach; a large brown bag and four hundred aluminum tubes came tumbling out.   My entire attraction to this particular tent had been that I thought it was a nice color.  (I know)

Now here we stood, Larry, me and our three young children, who expected to have a place to sleep for the night.  After trying every configuration imaginable with the aluminum tubes we created a reasonable looking abode that listed only slightly to the right….so we put driftwood on the left corner and smiled at each other.  We pumped up the six air mattresses we planned to sleep on and discovered the tent would only accommodate four of them.  So much for “sleeps six”.

Our friends, the seasoned campers, helped for a while.   Then, realizing our tent raising had great entertainment value, they sat back and nursed a beer….then watched and laughed and drank some more.

Finally it was done, and as I unzipped the front of the tent I held over my head the “no pest” strip that my friend had instructed me to buy.  “Just hang it in the top of the tent and zip it closed.   When you go to bed there won’t be any mosquitoes or flies,” she chirped.   I did as I was told, and there were no flies in the tent at night.  I am also pretty sure that there must have been a class action law suit a few years later that dealt with breathing in no pest strip fumes….but that’s another article.

As a group we set up a kitchen where we would cook communal meals, and everyone dug in and put their gear away.  Cooking was punctuated with  a series of wild dance moves; we quickly learned anything we put down on a table was immediately covered in black flies.  A spoon discarded carelessly during cooking soon became a living, moving object.  Shooing away flies actually took more energy than cooking.

Being the city girl that I am, I would not come to the island without an in depth explanation of what the bathroom facilities would be. (None would have been the honest answer)   I was assured by my cohorts that we would have a tent dedicated to a porta-potty, and there would be privacy and convenience that would satisfy even a stickler for those details…like me.   I won't say my friends lied to me.  Let's just say they "embroidered" the truth.   By day two the porta potty was replaced by a large pit with a big log over it; an old quilt that hung in front of the pit for “privacy” stood straight out in the wind off the lake.  This new make-shift facility was designed and dug by Phil "Scoop" Linne.  When he was finished he had a look of male pride on his face; I had a look of absolute horror on mine.   It was a modest woman’s nightmare.

On the evening of the fourth day it started to rain.  Our waterproof tent…which the box said was designed to laugh at the elements…was soon saturated. The flimsy white roof produced a steady drip into my left ear as I lay on the hard packed sand floor, (the air mattresses flat since day two) stacked like cordwood with my husband and children.  The storm grew worse, the lightning flashes revealing the white ceiling of the tent.  There, crawling toward the no pest strip, were several “sand spiders”; creatures that looked like pop bottle caps with legs.  They inched toward certain death as the no pest strip waited to do its job.  I couldn't take my eyes off them as I came to the realization that they would soon die and rain down on me.  It was a very, very long night.    The next day I spent wrapping the tent in plastic and Saran Wrap in case the rain continued.  It was a waste of time and plastic, but it kept me occupied.

As is usually the case the women did the cooking for the whole crew.  We worked on a folding table and washed things in the lake.  I’m sure Indian women did all of these same things and more without the benefit of a potato peeler.   It seemed we were always preparing a meal, cleaning up after a meal, fixing snacks for the kids, cleaning up after snacks for the kids or talking about what we were going to cook next.  The only real break in that routine was doing laundry in the lake.  The other women in the group considered these things to be “relaxing”.  The days grew longer.

If you are going to go camping these people we were with have got to be some of the most “fun” people on the planet.  We were a close group of coworkers and their spouses; Larry and I have never found a group like them since.   I know they all had a great time, and most were sad when the week was over…..It was the only thing we did not agree on.

The morning we were to pack up and head to the ferry to return to Sandusky I was up before daylight, ripping my kids out of their sleeping bags and packing the car.   I was not going to take a chance that we might be late for the boat, maybe trapped for another week on this deity forsaken rock.   I was already considering my options if the ferry didn’t show up.   I briefly considered the ramifications of faking a heart attack or hijacking a fishing boat….fortunately it didn’t come to that.   We actually were short one space on the ferry to return, but our friend John Foster and his family stayed over till the next day with his sister who happened to live on the island.  A wise choice…because my third option was to find my potato peeler and take a hostage.

Sunburned and bug bitten, the Pelee Island Gang saddled up and rode back to civilization, following one another like a modern day wagon train.  I came home weary but wiser.  The rest of the group went back a time or two in the summers ahead, but Larry and I hung up our tent and never returned.   Been there…done that…bought the bug spray.

And so, as we recently sat talking about vacations and “roughing it”, I knew immediately what my limits were because they had been sorely tested.  We’ve come a long way from that pop-bottle-returning young couple, and I could write a book about the journey.   I’m not the least bit embarrassed to say that vacationing today in a place with one bathroom is as rough as I intend to get.  “To thine own self be true”……..

Thank you:   John and Geneva Foster, Chuck and Cindy Campbell, Tharen and Phil Linne, Nancy and Charlie Schmidt for a week on the beach we will always remember…..and friendships we still cherish.  A special thanks you to Tharen for posting these pictures on FaceBook and reminding me of this long ago week!!

Lighting the Way

It seems to me that no matter what the” powers that be” are trying to achieve they always create more problems by making new rules.  The latest addition to the traffic laws that I’m aware of is the “if your wipers are on your lights are on” rule.  That’s supposed to magically keep us safe at some level I don’t understand.   In truth is it has just magnified a problem that’s been bugging me for a long, long while.

 I think the majority of new cars have lights that come on automatically when you turn the key.  The lights are purple and piercing like laser beams, and what no one considers is they may have turned the car/truck off with the lights on high beams.   Once again this morning I had a big, manly truck right on my bumper with his bright lights gouging my eyes out of their sockets through my rearview mirrors.   I adjusted both side mirrors away from my line of sight….he obviously didn’t notice.      I turned my rearview mirror down….not something he paid any attention to.   Since he was six inches from my rear bumper you would think he might have seen me adjusting anything shiny to keep his death rays from cooking my retinas…..but no.    This, of course, is at eight o’clock in the morning.   Someone, somewhere did the math and decided that cars/trucks (the Pok-er) with their lights on at eight in the a.m. are less likely to crash than those who (the Pok-ee) are plodding along without lights.   Since I am the “pok-ee” I do not agree.   To make matters worse the authorities created the law that requires everyone to have lights on when it rains, immediately even the OLD cars are wandering around with their bright lights on in broad daylight.   I am all for safety on the roads, but given the fact that many of today’s cars are equipped with headlights that can be monitored from a satellite you can see what a problem it can become if you end up with a truly dedicated tailgater on your bumper.  Rain or shine it can be very uncomfortable. 

Another driving hazard we’ve created is the “two lanes turning” traffic pattern.   If you read signs, if you pay attention, if you have half a brain there is no problem.  Obviously the ones who can meet those standards  are not the people I am meeting at “First Street turning onto Diamond Street as two lanes turn left” in Mansfield each morning.   Two days last week two different drivers almost side swiped me as we had a four wheeled disagreement over which lane I was allowed to occupy.  Here’s the basic rule if you happen to be one of the people I am trying to avoid …..Pick a lane AND STAY THE HECK IN IT.  Two lanes turning are not meant to converge; you should never change lanes during a turn, and you are not welcome in my lane at any time!   One woman at least had the decency to waggle her fingers at me in a concillatory  gesture as she barely missed shearing my driver’s side door off.  I’m assuming it was concillatory ; she was, after all, using all her fingers. 

I confess to being an impatient driver.  The more I’m running late the greater the chances are that I’m going to end up behind some law and order freak doing the speed limit.  However, as I work on my unbelievably long list of things I need to improve upon I wish the “light brighters” and the “tail gaters” would work on their own lists before one of them blinds or runs over me. 

                          Please….dim your lights and watch where you’re going!!!!!! 

This has been a public service “suggestion” from the curmudgeon in the convertible that you nearly
took off the road last week.  In an effort to feel safe on the roadway again I have decided to trade my car in on an urban assault vehicle.  Green is my favorite color, after all, and the trade in value on these things is pretty good.  Oh, and just for the record... I will be using the right lane as we turn left. I suggest you remember that.

                                                
                                                    In spite of my traffic rant, LIFE IS GOOD.